Plenty of bands hack the hell out of their practice spots converting them into DIY recording spaces. But Dr. Dog went above and beyond when they took over a silversmith's vaulted expanse in Philadelphia earlier this year. They rolled out the chemicals and brought in a soundboard. They hung up their collection of guitars on one wall and a mural of the American flag fashioned from decks of playing cards on another. They installed a shower. They collected all the bells and whistles they'd need to keep the momentum going after a couple years of solid touring behind last year's Be the Void and 2010's Shame, Shame. They dubbed one of the smaller rooms in the studio the B-Room, where each member of the band would seclude himself to work through troublesome solos or play with vocal tricks. They were ready to lose themselves in the corners of the new home they'd made, and each nail they hammered or wall they framed was met with the same determination that would fuel their imminent trip back to the drawing board.

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B-Room, out tomorrow on Anti, is a product of this environment. After wheeling a marimba into the low-ceilinged control room at the studio for a performance of "The Truth," B-Room's first track, Dr. Dog took us through the literal and figurative construction of the record that's quickly become their proudest achievement. Watch the performance and read the interview below.

ESQUIRE.COM: So, this is where the magic behind B-Room happened, huh? What did it look like when you first moved in here?

TOBY LEAMAN: Oh, it was a total disaster. An old silversmith was here before us and she had gotten sick, and couldn't really hold onto the place. There were vats and vats of these chemicals. I don't know what they were. Actually, nobody does — they just took 'em and moved 'em across the hall because, I mean, it was like, twenty or thirty of these giant drums of ... stuff. We've always had our own studios, but this is definitely the most ambitious project. We just built it and it was so much fun, just hanging out, and not working on a record at first, just building. Everything's to code, even though we didn't mean to do that.

ESQ: Do you have a more intimate connection with B-Room because you built the space around it?

TOBY: Absolutely. Beyond that, the way the record was made, it was so much more of a group effort than any other we've ever done. All of it combined with the building and the way we did it, just the attitude behind all of it — it certainly made it feel more like a group effort.

ESQ: You get that sense, listening to B-Room, but I feel like that also applies to Dr. Dog live, too. You collectively function as one groove-happy machine — or at least it looks and sounds that way.

SCOTT McMICKEN: That's been percolating every year. The more we play live, the more we learn about what we are as a whole. The whole project of building this place together leading up to the record, it was this accidental, imperfect kind of preparation to have all of us working in this other context, where it was so easy to understand your skill set and be useful. That same thing applies when you're making music. The way those two things tie in together — the natural evolution of the band, and how this whole project came in and enhanced it all — had us thinking ahead about what would be the best set of circumstances for us to get this thing done. Usually, we just go in, we make sure we have the necessary gear and start and see what happens. But this time, because we were literally building the place where we were going to make this record, we thought a lot about what we wanted to do when the time came. I feel like that mode of thought also allowed us to escalate some of the growing sensibilities in the band. We opened up all these channels for ourselves, because we had total control to do so, and then we were able to just go to town and get to work. We knew it would rule. We just didn't know what the extent of that would be.

TOBY: Just the sense of satisfaction from walking in here, that aspect of it is wholly new. You don't walk into any other studio and immediately feel proud that it exists. You're glad there's a studio there and hopefully everything's set up right and you're going to play, but we come in here, and our level of positivity is already here just by being here.

ESQ: What was a dream purchase you splurged on for the studio?

SCOTT: That's what's interesting: We didn't actually have to get that much. Mostly all the money in the budget was sunk into building materials and stuff, and we're pretty much working with the same gear. With each record we do, there's one prize pig we can get, but this? All our money was spent at Home Depot.